I am in the woods training now. I have changed a lot in the recent time that has passed. Sure, it has only been a little while in reality, but through meditation, I have experienced the countless lives of others. All of those lives ended with resentment still present and had taught me a lot.
I wish I could say that each one hit as hard, but slowly the emotions that overwhelmed me lost their effectiveness. I knew what to expect from others somehow. I could spot this… evil, within those in my sight. This ability is from experiences in others' memories, but I believe it should translate into the real world.
I was going over what I had learned about darkness. I had learned that it could decay all things living. I could also use it to hide myself in a cloak of darkness. It is not very good at the moment, but with more use, I can feel myself getting better with it.
I could also control the darkness itself. It's a lot like the spacial affinity, in that it can be molded into any shape. I found the least straining form to be a dark tendril that acts like a rope and binds.
I snuck up on a rabbit to test out a new method to use during the day. The rabbit was lazily grazing on the grass when a tendril rose from below it and held it in place. The instant it sensed something its legs went crazy slamming into the ground. The rabbit's flight response had activated.
It squealed and squeaked, but I couldn't hear it. A barrier made from condensed space cut it off from the rest of the world. I closed my eyes as I summoned a sharp blade of spacial energy from within its head.
'I hate this. Is this really the only way to strengthen the dark affinity?'
I removed the sound barrier but left an invisible shield around me. I will not make the same mistake again.
A tendril wrapped around the rabbit, and I heard a hiss as it consumed it. I could feel that it was stronger now, even though only a little bit. I had spent the last few days doing this, and the rest of the steps the manual had pointed out.
I wanted to go further out and fight some beasts rather than this process that made me nauseous, but to do that I needed to get a hunter's license, and I did not have the money nor the income to afford it.
_______
I found that the range of my magic had increased to around 25 feet. This is a lot further than others in my age group and is mostly due to me having multiple affinities.
My dark affinity has grown much stronger as well. When I first awakened it, I would at best be able to hide in places with very little light, but now, I could hide in dim moonlight. It seems a bit unnatural though to do it out in the open, if someone were to see a ball of shade surrounded by light they would definitely be spooked.
In this time, I had made progress which would have taken other mages years. As I meditated, I felt connected to the darkness very closely. It was odd, I used to be afraid of the dark, yet now it felt like the dark was drawn to me and I drawn to it. When it came to drawing in mana, I could split my attention as half if not more of the work was being done by the mana itself.
I the time that I was not able to normally meditate, I had learned a lot. I saw the worst parts of people. I have even begun to expect how people would react. It's strange and hard to explain, but I could see in their eyes how they took things in, almost like I could sense what would come from what I had seen before.
I noticed that as the memories got closer to the present, people became more clever and crueler.
I wish I could say that I was able to predict everyone, but there were many outliers. Not everyone is bad, or out to cause harm. At least not in public view. My mom is one of those outliers. She acted crazily all the time around me and my siblings, but whenever we were out, she would limit her craziness. A year ago, I had managed to make her mad because I had (fallen asleep) right after coming home. I had been meditating and got pulled into a memory and couldn't hear her screaming my name from the next room. Well, I made the mistake of letting one of my teachers see the bruises she had left, and a few people showed up at the house. Nothing came of it; she somehow deflected their presence with innocent talk and calling me a clumsy kid who fights with his siblings.
I shook my head to clear those thoughts from them, I had distanced myself from my family at every chance I could recently, and there were hardly any confrontations like those before. It also didn't hurt as it did long ago.
'Tomorrow, it begins, I signed up for elemental classes. There aren't many mages, so they grouped them all into one class.'
I have been training a bit recently, the places that I've passed I could see a decrease in the many populations there, with one exception, plants were thriving. I haven't been targeting them because the manual said nothing about their effectiveness, but with any decomposing matter being reduced to base nutrients by my dark affinity the plants were able to grow faster.
It was Troublesome to control the dark affinity as it wanted to break down anything I would allow it, but with the use of my spacial affinity, I was able to control what it could and could not devour.
I was taken from my thoughts as I trained my magic by a strong source of energy. It was dark... but not. I followed it, and before I knew it, I was in the town's cemetery.
'Hey there kid.' A voice sounded in my head.
I turned to find where it came from only to see a glowing person. He was strange, his features were undiscernible, and his feet seemed to not want to stay on the ground.
I could tell what was going on, and although it was odd, I felt at ease for some reason.
"Hey, you are a ghost, right?" I said while looking around to see if anyone was watching me talk to myself.
'Yeah, I died not too long ago. A few wolves got past me, I didn't stand a chance, but you, you really kicked ass.' He said starting out somber but cheered up throughout.
'He is trying to cheer me up.' I thought as I looked around.
'I was scared, my body had already given out its last breath, but I chased after them. Just when I had caught up, I saw that you had taken them out. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, thank you. My wife lives not that far from where you were, and I just don't think my soul would be able to rest knowing she died because of me.'
The man would be crying countless tears if he could, but I could feel the gratefulness rolling from him and I had noticed something that opened my eyes.
The dark element within me felt more reserved when usually it would be ready to devour anything.
I looked down at my past self, seeing firsthand how the dark affinity was feeding the unawakened light affinity within me.
I knew why it was growing, I always somehow knew. It was because I was happy. At this point, I have seen nothing but the memories of restless souls. Looking across the cemetery I could sense many more who were restless, but right now I could see one filled with relief.
'I hope you can make it far in life, much farther than me, I was… I was just too young. But you won't be, I can tell I can see it in your eyes they are very mature and at first cold, but I see that fire in them it burns so brightly. Follow where that fire takes you, even when you are in the depths of your despair it will pull you up.'
'Goodbye.'
I did not say very much the entire time, instead I just stood there. I guess I was partially paralyzed from shock and paranoia.
The ghost was gone. I could tell because the small amount of dark energy that was where he was had dissipated into nothingness.
Things felt lighter, as I tried to take in what had just happened.
Things always looked so dim, but I felt better than ever before.
'This must be the light affinities doing.'
Chapter 12.5
There it was. The house that felt like the end of the street because I would willingly stop in front of it and go inside.
'This is home.'
It did not feel like one at least, the only place I felt safe was my room when my mom came home. The standoff that has been going on between us could not go on forever. My dad left the house a long ago, I am sure that it is a permanent thing now. If mom were to see him walking up to the house now, she would be telling me about how terrible he was.
I never can find any sympathy for her, but she always takes my silence as me taking her side.
The door creaked as I opened it, and the voices I heard from within stopped.
"You are late." My mother said as I entered.
"I had some extra classwork I had to get done." I lied. The light feeling that had overcome me in the graveyard was already getting drowned out.
"Yeah right. You were probably hanging out in the woods again." She retorted.
I did not respond I just went for my usual routine of getting some rest when I could.
"What are you doing put your shoes back on."
"Why?"
"You are closing the laundromat tonight."
Her words always came out as a shout. It was as if she was always angry.
The laundromat. Originally, my dad was taking care of it, but she insisted on taking over because she did not want him to be able to say he was helping to provide for his kids with such an easy job.
"Why are you not doing it? You are the one who told Dad to stop and took the keys." I asked.
"Because I am busy tonight."
"With what."
"That is none of your damn business!"
I put my shoes on and went to the second drawer from the left of the stove picking out the keys from among the cutlery.
'We have a key rack; she is just paranoid that my dad would break in and steal a set of keys.'
I could already tell what she was doing. I always did. I remember her mistakes like the day she drove us with her to a man's house and left us in the living room with strangers.
My dad shouting from outside scared me back then and I could not understand why he was so mad. From sneaking out of the back of the house to getting in and driving away.
I just want to leave, but I am not the only one. My younger brother who was born from that man is there, along with Kate.